Monday, 10 July 2017

The Anatomy of Monsters

The Anatomy of
Monsters is a new anthology from Stitched Smile Publications and is edited
by Robert Teun. Monsters are, of course, a staple of horror and many people’s –
myself included – introduction to the genre. The theme behind this anthology
was an interesting one: new takes on old legends, stories which would provide
new interpretations on classic monsters, perhaps provide new insights into
their lives (or undeaths as the case may be).

The book is a mixture of original stories and reprints with
eighteen tales covering a wide range of subjects. Vampires are the subject of
the opening story, Gary McMahon’s I know
I Promised You a Story, a tale which adopts an approach similar to George A
Romero’s Martin, creating a compact
little tale which actually serves very well as an introduction to the book,
ending on a nice use of the “inviting in” trope to set up the rest of the
stories in the anthology.

Origins stories abound here, with authors presenting their
own takes on why and how monsters came into being. This is done in straightforward
fashion with Alex Laybourne’s The Birth
of Djinn and Jess Landry’s Gorgons using
narrative styles in keeping with the historical periods under scrutiny whilst a
more adventurous style is employed with Greg Chapman’s Conjoined and Carl Jennings’ Losing
Visibility which provide alternative explanations for Jekyll and Hyde and
The Invisible Man respectively. Perhaps the best of the early insights into…
stories is Steven Chapman’s Le Mort
Vivant which uses the setting of the tunnels beneath the Paris opera House
to great effect in this engaging tale of the Phantom’s early years.

It’s the later years of Frankenstein’s Monster which are the
subject of Brian Hodge’s A Loaf of Bread,
a Jug of Wine, a story which cleverly uses the paradoxical combination of
sensitivity and destructive potential of the creature to chilling effect.

I have a particular fondness for werewolves so found myself
a little disappointed at their appearance here in Nicholas Vince’s Family Tree. It’s a story in which the
tone seems a little inconsistent and which lays its cards (and plot) out at the
very beginning. What follows is that plot playing itself out (therefore without
any surprise elements to it) amidst some clunky exposition/info dumps. Even
more disappointing was Whitechapel, 1888 by Alisha Jordan. The subject matter
is obvious from the title but the story gives away its “secret” – the identity of the Ripper - at the outset and then proceeds to be little more than a lurid
description of the murders themselves, details which will be known to anyone
with even a passing interest in the case but presented here a little too
gratuitously.

Also slightly disappointing, given how much I’ve enjoyed
everything else of his I’ve read, is Josh Malerman’s Basic Shade. Set in prehistoric times, it tells of the creation of
the first ever ghost – a clever concept but one I felt wasn’t quite realised in
the final story.

Laura Mauro appropriates an REM song title for Nightswimming in which the real monster
of the piece isn’t the one you might be expecting whilst Simon Bestwick shows a
romantic side to his talents (albeit interspersed with graphic horror and
monsters lurking in caves) with To Walk
in Midnight’s Realm.

The Darkness in Our
dreams is a high-concept piece from Phil Sloman told almost as a fable
which describes the birth of nightmares. It’s cleverly done, and has some
suitably disturbing imagery to back up the narrative. I liked it a lot but I
think my favourite story in the collection is Daniel I Russell’s Rational Creatures, a story which best fits the book’s title, a historical horror which combines the dissection table
with high art.

I enjoyed my time uncovering The Anatomy of Monsters. It’s an entertaining mix of stories and
styles and (on the whole) well written throughout. The
balance between old and new both in terms of reprints and originals and the
monsters themselves is just about right. This is Volume 1 in a proposed series and
I look forward to seeing what future editions will bring.